


Isolation

by laughter_now



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Anniversary, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughter_now/pseuds/laughter_now
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He got it, really. Everyone had a job to do. Life aboard a starship was busy, he understood that everyone had better things to do than to come by and watch him die a slow and painful death. But was it really so much to ask that someone occasionally walked by the window separating his ward from the rest of Medical? Just to give him a quick wave or something? He didn't want much, didn't even demand that someone turned off that beeping torture device above his head that was slowly but surely driving him insane. He only wanted a quick sign that said "hello Leonard, we haven't forgotten about you, even if we're all too damn busy to keep you company."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Isolation

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own anything associated with the Star Trek franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> Written in response to the prompt "Anniversary - one partner sick" on my schmoop bingo card. First posted to my lj on July 15th, 2010.

**_Isolation_**  
  
  
The monitor above the bed was beeping.  
  
 _Beep. Beep. Beep._  
  
How anybody was supposed to get some rest with that infernal sound ringing in their ears, Leonard had no idea. It was torture, plain and simple.  
  
 _Get some rest, Leonard. You need to give your body time to heal. I'll just turn on those monitors to make absolutely sure you won't get a second of restful sleep over the next couple of days, then I'll be out of your hair._  
  
Crap.  
  
This was some fiendish plan by his staff, some sort of revenge for every time Leonard had snapped at one of them, or made them do inventory when they thought it wasn't necessary. It definitely wasn't normal, that much he knew. When he treated a patient, that horrible beeping was never as loud.  
  
Maybe they didn't _want_ him to fall asleep, and that's why they had put the volume up. Maybe he was sicker than they let on. Maybe he was about to die, and they wanted to keep him from falling asleep because they knew he'd never wake up once he did.  
  
Well, in that case they could have spared themselves the effort. The biobed was horribly uncomfortable, putting pressure against his body in all the places where it shouldn't. It was impossible to get any sleep on this death-contraption, even without the added discomfort of the electronic beeping in his ear.  
  
Damn, he was thirsty.  
  
There was water on the nightstand, he knew, but moving seemed like too much of an effort right now. Every single muscle in his body hurt, even the ones he as a surgeon was aware existed but had never exercised in his entire life, and just the thought of lifting his arm to reach for the cup of water seemed like an insurmountable task. He'd have to hold on until the next time a nurse or Geoffrey came by to check in on him. It couldn't be long now. Someone was coming by regularly. Every hour? Every two hours? It was so hard to tell. They could at least have given him a watch, or a computer console within his line of sight. But someone was bound to come in here sooner or later.  
  
Leonard closed his eyes, trying to will his tense muscles to relax into the hard and lumpy surface of the bed.  
  
 _Beep. Beep. Beep._  
  
Not working. As long as the monitor kept beeping at that volume, he wasn't going to get any rest.  
  
But he was so damn tired. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and sleep for a couple of days, but he just couldn't. Impossible, that's what it was. And as soon as a member of his staff deigned to look in on him again, he was going to give them hell about it. It was irresponsible to leave a dying man on his own for so long, that's what it was. And even if he wasn't dying from whatever illness he had caught, that infernal beeping of the biobed monitor was going to do the job for sure.  
  
There was a thin sheet covering him instead of a blanket, and while Leonard was glad he had been allowed to keep this much of his dignity and not lie around stark naked in front of his entire staff, the sheet was flimsy and stuck to his skin. His earlier – feeble and ineffective – attempts at moving had dislodged the sheet, too. Now it was pooling beneath his navel, and he could watch the beads of sweat pop up on the skin of his chest.  
  
The biobed wasn't only uncomfortable, but also malfunctioning. It was supposed to help cool him down, but its thermal unit had to be broken because it was just as warm and clammy as his entire body was. If only someone in this hellhole of a Medical Bay would finally do their damn job and look after a suffering patient, they'd probably realize that, too.  
  
Just great. He had to be dying, otherwise someone would have been by to fix this already.  
  
And worst of all, he was going to die alone.  
  
He got it, really. Everyone had a job to do. Life aboard a starship was busy, he understood that everyone had better things to do than to come by and watch him die a slow and painful death. It probably wasn't good for crew morale, either. Besides, it was quite a lot of a hassle to get through the decontamination airlock into the isolation ward where Leonard was laid out. No small wonder nobody came by to visit. But was it really so much to ask that someone occasionally walked by the window separating his ward from the rest of Medical? Just to give him a quick wave or something? He didn't want much, didn't even demand that someone turned off that beeping torture device above his head that was slowly but surely driving him insane. He only wanted a quick sign that said _hello Leonard, we haven't forgotten about you, even if we're all too damn busy to keep you company_.  
That wasn't much, right?  
  
He hadn't seen anyone other than the nurses or Geoffrey for the past days. Well, he _thought_ it had been days, but there really was no way to be absolutely sure. It had been impossible to get some real sleep because of the infernal beeping and the unbearable heat, but he had been drifting in and out of consciousness. At least he thought he had, because when he tried to think back, things started to blur in his mind.  
  
But he was nearly one hundred percent sure that he hadn't had any visitors since he had been brought in here.  
  
Jim.  
  
Jim had been there in the beginning, when he had first gotten sick, Leonard was sure of that. He distinctly remembered the feeling of a cool hand against his flushed skin, of fingers carding through his sweaty hair, of a pair of arms holding him against a strong chest as his body had heaved and convulsed. Jim had been there, he had brought Leonard to Medical in the middle of the night as the vomiting had started and not let up again, and he had been there for the entire time while Geoffrey had examined him.  
  
And then there had been a whole lot of sensor beeps and alarms going off on the scanners and analysis units, and in less than a minute, Leonard had been whisked away into the isolation ward. The last thing he remembered was the image of Jim on the other side of the glass partition, arguing loudly about something with Nurse Chapel. Leonard hadn't been able to hear, but from the way Jim was pointing through the glass, it had been obvious that he wanted to go into Leonard's ward but wasn't allowed to.  
  
And then Christine had led Jim off into the direction of the biobeds, and that was the last Leonard had seen of his husband. A few moments later, Geoffrey had injected him with something and Leonard's world had turned dark.  
  
Maybe Jim was infected, too?  
  
The beeping monitor above his bed was speeding up, and Leonard screwed his eyes shut against the pain that was jarring through his head at the sound.  
  
What if he had infected Jim with whatever it was that he had? It wasn't as if Geoffrey's explanation had made much sense through the haze of fever earlier…yesterday…whenever it had been. Some sort of virus…or maybe a viral infection…bacterial infection? Something, courtesy of the last away mission he had been on. Nobody aboard was inoculated against it, hence the isolation ward. But what if Jim had it, too? Jim had been with him after he had caught whatever it was, which meant Jim had been exposed. If there was anyone who was in danger of being infected by him, it was Jim.  
  
God, please no. Not that. Not Jim.  
  
If he had infected Jim with whatever it was that he had…Jim was allergic to some of the most standard medication-bases, and treating him for a previously unknown infection was always a high-risk maneuver. What if…what if something was wrong? What if Jim needed him? Whatever had happened, he needed to see Jim, needed to know what was going on.  
  
Every muscle in his body screamed in protest, and rationally Leonard knew that he wasn't going to get very far, but he tried. Oh, how he tried. He didn't manage to sit up entirely, but he did lift his upper body off the biobed even as his finger found the small emergency button next to his hand and he pressed it without thinking much about it.  
  
 _Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._  
  
It was a frantic rhythm now, every beep a sharp pain in his ears that echoed through his head and made his skull pound, but he couldn't think about that now. He needed to find Jim.  
  
The hiss of the airlock was incredibly loud, and Leonard reflexively tried to bring his hands up to cover his ears. He didn't get them more than a few inches off the mattress before the pain in his muscles made him cry out, and without his hands there to support him he fell back hard against the uncomfortable mattress, his whole body flaring up in agony.  
  
"Easy, Len. Easy."  
  
It was Geoffrey's deep baritone, and a moment later the infernal beeping above Leonard's head stopped, leaving the room in silence safe for the ringing in Leonard's ears. He couldn't hold back a choked sob as the pain lessened somewhat, even if it didn't go away entirely. Above him, a tricorder whirled, but the sound seemed muted and wasn't quite as bad as the monitor's beeps had been.  
  
"Easy," Geoffrey repeated. "Your fever has gone up again. Are you in pain?"  
  
Leonard managed a nod even as his lips tried to form Jim's name. He needed to find Jim, and for that he needed to make Geoffrey understand. Once he knew where Jim was he could worry about whether or not he was in pain.  
  
"Headache? Sore muscles? Sensitivity to sound?"  
  
Another nod which he hoped would be sufficient for all three questions. Something pressed against his neck, and the pain of the injection was only worsened by the loud hiss of its release so close by his ear, but almost immediately Leonard felt some of the pain dissipate.  
  
"Your symptoms still haven't let up, unfortunately, but I think we finally managed to adjust your medication accordingly. It should get better over the next couple of hours, but you need to give yourself time to rest. The injection should take the edge off the pain for a while, and also help to clear the cobwebs in your head a little. Now, what got you so agitated?"  
  
Speaking seemed like an impossible feat, but with the painkiller coursing through his system, Leonard finally managed to wrap his lips and tongue around the word.  
  
"Jim…"  
  
His voice sounded as if he had gargled with gravel, and that one syllable was scratching painfully along his throat, but now it was finally out. Geoffrey at least seemed to understand immediately, and Leonard was sure that he saw the other doctor give a small eye-roll.  
  
"The Captain is currently busy agitating the medical staff, as he has done since you've been brought in here. I promised to let him come visit you as soon as we're done here."  
  
He ran the tricorder over Leonard's body once more, then made a few adjustments to the settings of the biobed. Slowly but surely, Leonard felt the effects Geoffrey had promised him start to happen. His head started to clear, and coherent thought no longer seemed like an elusive concept.  
  
"What happened?", he rasped out, grateful when this time Geoffrey seemed to be able to read his thirst from the sound of his voice. The other doctor picked up the cup of water from the bedside table and held out the straw for Leonard while he answered.  
  
"Well, it's not the first time you asked that question, but you were probably too feverish to remember the answer the first few times around. Congratulations Leonard, you infected yourself with a previously unknown virus. So far, our best guess is that the point of infection was the away mission on the Grathorian moon, but I still have a team working on tracing down what exactly you've infected yourself on. As a precaution, I placed all members of the away team under isolation, and the entire crew was under orders to report to Medical at the slightest sign of illness, but you were the only one who suffered from an infection. By now we've synthesized an antiviral and have inoculated the entire crew, so we managed to scrape by a medical crisis."  
  
"How bad was it?"  
  
Geoffrey put down the cup of water and ran his hand through his short hair with a sigh.  
  
"Bad, Len. A midnight medical emergency call from the Captain's quarters is never good news, but this was really bad. None of the antiemetics we gave you had any effects, and you were dehydrating at an alarming rate because you just wouldn't stop vomiting. We had you on an old-fashioned IV for over a day, because in the end it was the only thing that worked. Add a continuously high fever to that, and I guess you understand why we were all worried about you. What you're feeling right now is only the lingering after-effects, though. We kept you sedated through the worst of the pain, and it should fade away soon, but you'll be sore for a while. For now, you're under orders to get as much liquids into you as possible, because your renal parameters are still nowhere near where I want them. But give it a day or two and you'll be back on your feet. I want to run some more tests, then we can get you out of isolation later today."  
  
It was a lot to take in, and Leonard quickly realized that his brain wasn't really capable of processing it all. Later, there'd be plenty of time to read his medical file and figure out what exactly had happened. For now, there was something far more important Geoffrey had said.  
  
"Jim's out there?"  
  
This time, there was absolutely no doubt as to whether or not Geoffrey was rolling his eyes.  
  
"He is. And I'm going to let him in here, if only so that my staff will have a little peace and quiet."  
  
Leonard felt his eyebrow raise slightly on his forehead. " _Your_ staff?"  
  
Geoffrey shrugged. "They're my staff as long as you're in here, getting treated to the full patient-experience, yes. I'll gladly hand control back to you once you're fully recovered. But only then. I'm not kidding Len, you need to rest. I have instructed the Captain as well to not let you over-exert yourself. The last thing you need right now is a setback."  
  
Leonard nodded, though it was mostly to appease Geoffrey. Right now, he only wanted to see Jim.  
  
"Good." Geoffrey picked up his tricorder again. "I'll check in on you later. It's good to see you awake again, Len."  
  
Geoffrey turned around and left, and this time the hiss of the door mechanism still sent a slight jab of pain through Leonard's eardrums, but it was no longer an unbearable pain. Which was good, because just moments after Geoffrey left, the door hissed open again. At the sight of Jim, something inside of Leonard relaxed, and he sank back into the mattress, which suddenly didn't seem quite as hard and lumpy anymore. Jim was pushing a small trolley, but Leonard barely spared a second glance to the unusual sight. Jim was here, that was all that mattered.  
  
"Jim."  
  
Jim pushed the trolley beside the bedside table and a second later he was there right beside Leonard, hands framing his face. Leonard leaned into the touch of the cool hands with an almost desperate sigh.  
  
"How are you feeling, Bones?"  
  
"I'm okay. Sore. Feverish. But Geoff said I'd get there."  
  
Jim's thumbs were moving over Leonard's cheeks, tracing the stubble there.  
  
"I was worried," Jim rasped out. "You didn't stop throwing up, and you were in so much pain. And then M'Benga kept muttering about viruses and contamination and wheeled you off to isolation. They didn't know what was going on with you, either."  
  
"Geoffrey said they put you into precautionary isolation, too."  
  
"As well as the rest of the away team, yes. For twelve hours, until he had analyzed your blood thoroughly and made sure that none of our tests were showing the same traces of infection that yours did. I…I might have yelled at Nurse Chapel until she agreed to have the video feed from your isolation ward transferred to the one they kept me in. That way, I could at least see what was happening to you."  
  
Leonard pressed his cheek more firmly against Jim's palm. "I'm okay now."  
  
Jim drew a deep breath, fingers ghosting over Leonard's cheek again before he withdrew the hand.  
  
"I know." Jim forced a smile onto his face and straightened up from his position leaning over the bed. "In fact, I'm here to make sure that it stays that way."  
  
The smile grew a little more real as Jim stepped back from the bed and pulled over the trolley. "In fact, I've been properly prepared, instructed and vetted to serve as your personal nurse for today." He gestured along his torso, and for the first time Leonard noticed that Jim was in off-duty civilian clothes and not in uniform. "I would have worn a proper nurse outfit for the occasion, but M'Benga said he wouldn't let me in here if I tried. So we'll have to imagine the outfit, but on the upside – I'm officially qualified to give sponge baths."  
  
Despite himself, Leonard laughed. "Not to rain on your parade, but sponge baths have been outdated since the invention of the handheld sonic. Also, I'm quite sure that you don't need a certificate to administer sponge baths. You just need a willing patient and a sponge. Actually, as long as the patient is unconscious, you really only need a sponge."  
  
There was a twinkle in Jim's eye now that seemed more like the Jim Leonard was used to seeing. "Oh, I have a sponge. And as soon as that biobed is no longer recording every single one of your vital signs, I will put it to good use. For now, I'll just have to take care of you in the more traditional sense."  
  
Much to Leonard's surprise, he began fumbling around with the controls of the biobed. But before Leonard could tell him to stop before he broke something, the back of the bed slowly moved into an upright position. Jim's smile was almost mischievous as he leaned down to press a quick kiss to Leonard's feverish forehead.  
  
"Told you I had been instructed."  
  
The thin sheet had shifted down Leonard's stomach as the back of the bed lifted, and Jim carefully pulled it up, folding it down and tugging it in so that rested below his chest.  
  
"Now, M'Benga said you need to drink a lot. If your kidneys keep acting up, he's not going to let you out of here."  
  
He picked up the cup with water and held the straw to Leonard's lips. And he was still thirsty, Leonard realized, despite the water Geoffrey had made him drink earlier. He closed his lips around the straw and started sipping as Jim kept on talking.  
  
"Unfortunately, you're restricted to water for the foreseeable future. But with the amounts M'Benga wants you to drink, it's probably good that alcohol is off the table for now. We'll make up for any missed toasting once you're back home."  
  
The words didn't really made sense, but Leonard was too focused on the feeling of water running down his throat, soothing the scratchy and raw feeling, to think about it. The water was tepid, not as cool as he would have liked if Geoffrey didn't have any say in the matter, but it still felt so good that he didn't even waste any thoughts to the question of what would happen once all those liquids he was taking in needed to come out again.  
  
Jim pulled away the straw once the cup was empty, gently wiping a stray drop of water from Leonard's lips.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
Jim grimaced. "M'Benga said you won't be thankful anymore when you're no longer thirsty and still forced to drink more water. But for now, your personal nurse has been given orders to make sure you eat something."  
  
Leonard frowned. "Jim, I don't think…"  
  
A finger pressed against his lips, stopping his protests before he could voice them.  
  
"You need to get something into you. It's been days, Bones."  
  
Medically speaking, that might be right, but Leonard remembered the feeling of throwing up the contents of his stomach all too vividly, and it was an experience he didn't want to repeat anytime soon. He felt a little queasy just thinking about it, and if there was any possibility he'd much rather postpone eating for as long as possible.  
  
Jim must have seen the shift in his expression, because pressed a quick, reassuring kiss to Leonard's lips.  
  
"Trust me, Bones. This whole care-package has been thoroughly checked and signed off on by M'Benga. I'm not talking about a five-course meal here, you'll see."  
  
He moved away from the bed and pressed the button on the bedside console that extended the tray. He shifted it across the bed, and picked up a covered plate from the trolley he had pushed in earlier. Grabbing a spoon from the trolley, he sat down on the edge of the biobed.  
  
"You won't believe how hard it is to come by a chicken in the middle of space. Poultry of any kind seems to be a problem, but at least I could convince the people in the Botany lab to give up a few of the fresh vegetables they're trying to cultivate. So maybe that's going to make up for the fact that the chicken is replicated."  
  
He uncovered the plate, and Leonard caught sight of the liquid inside, still slightly steaming, before the smell hit him and he had to close his eyes. For a second, there was the feeling of nausea, and the memory of throwing up the inner lining of his stomach, but that transformed quickly into an unexpected feeling of hunger.  
  
It smelt wonderful. Not spicy or rich, but comfortable and known, an smell that took him back twenty years to a house in Georgia and the sounds of his mother fussing around in the kitchen.  
  
"You made me chicken soup?"  
  
Jim seemed slightly apologetic. " _Chef_ made you chicken soup. I only made sure he had what he needed. I don't think it would have ended too well if I had tried on my own."  
  
Warmth flooded through Leonard's chest, a feeling that should be uncomfortable with the fever still coursing through his body, but that wasn't. It unclenched something inside of him, and he felt his face shift into a weak smile of his own.  
  
"Thanks, Jim."  
  
He tried to reach for the spoon, but while Geoffrey's earlier injection had taken the edge off the pain and he could move his arm with only a slight twinge of soreness, the moment he tried to pick up the spoon he realized that this wasn't going to work out. The spoon seemed heavy in his hand, and he couldn't probably raise it without his hand shaking. There was no way he was going to get any soup to end up in his mouth like that. All over his chest and the sheets, yes, but not in his mouth.  
  
Jim smiled and took the spoon out of his hand, gently trapping Leonard's hand between his two cool palms for a moment before he let go and started to stir the spoon through the soup.  
  
"Unfortunately, it's probably just as lukewarm as your water is, but M'Benga didn't sign off on hot food just yet."  
  
He filled the spoon, wiping off any excess drops on the side of the plate, then brought the spoon towards Leonard's mouth, a smile playing around the corners of his lips.  
  
"Open up, Bones."  
  
It should be embarrassing. By all rights it should embarrass the hell out of him to be spoon-fed like a baby, just because he was too weak to hold a damn spoon on his own. But strangely, it wasn't. Oh, it was definitely no position he'd ever voluntarily put himself into, but it wasn't embarrassing. This was _Jim_ after all, and they were damn well close enough that it was hard for something as simple as the fact that he was too weak to eat on his own to become embarrassing between them. Besides, Jim treated it like it was no big deal, and that was probably the most important thing of them all.  
  
In between the spoons of soup he fed him, he kept up a constant stream of conversation that served as a proper distraction from what he was doing.  
  
The soup tasted wonderful, even though Jim was right and it was only lukewarm. But it was just warm enough to evoke memories of comfort from times too long in the past to remember properly, and every spoonful slid easily down his throat, soothing some of the lingering soreness. Maybe he had been a bit too hasty in his vow to not eat again anytime soon.  
  
"M'Benga probably told you that nobody else was infected," Jim said, his tone that of a normal conversation and in no way suggesting that he was just spoon-feeding his husband. "Which is good, because while I know he's a really good doctor, I wouldn't want the ship to slither into a medical crisis with you out of commission. Besides, I think M'Benga's got a little sadistic streak."  
  
Leonard frowned at Jim between two spoonful of soup. "Why do you think that?"  
  
Jim shrugged, then filled the next spoon. "He put all of us in isolation, for one."  
  
"Medical necessity, Jim. You know that."  
  
"Is it also a necessity for him to know how often we had sex since we came back from that moon?"  
  
Leonard nearly choked on a mouthful of soup. "What?"  
  
"Apparently, since you were infected, there was – and I quote - _a heightened risk of me infecting myself through prolonged physical contact, let alone the exchange of body fluids_. Which translated into the more sex we had, the more likely it was that I had infected myself, and he insisted that I told him an exact number."  
  
Which, Leonard had to admit, was a medically sound inquiry, whether they liked it or not.  
  
"What did you do?"  
  
Again, Jim shrugged. "I told him the truth, what else should I have done?" He chuckled to himself as he filled the spoon again. "And then I told him that no, I wasn't exaggerating, and now I think he's maybe a little envious."  
  
Leonard groaned. "Jim, I have to work with him. I really don't need the details of our sex-life to be a part of that."  
  
Jim laughed, and put the spoon down for a moment to press a quick kiss on Leonard's forehead.  
  
"Just for the record, I didn't exaggerate. He asked, I answered, easy as that. It's really not my fault that you're so damn good looking that I can't keep my hands off you."  
  
He kissed him again, on the mouth this time, and picked up the spoon once more. But Leonard shook his head at him.  
  
"No, thanks. I think I've had enough, Jim."  
  
Jim checked the remaining soup on the plate, and apparently agreed that it had been enough food for the first attempt at eating. He cleared away the plate and retreated the tray again.  
  
"Thanks, Jim."  
  
Jim shrugged uncomfortably. "It was all Chef's doing."  
  
"And your idea." He waited until Jim looked at him. "Thank you."  
  
Jim smiled, and at that moment Leonard wanted nothing more than to pull the other man close to him. But that would have to wait until he was out of here.  
  
"Did M'Benga say when you can get out of here?" Jim asked, deflecting like he usually did when something hit too close emotionally, and he wasn't ready to deal with it yet. Leonard shrugged.  
  
"He's waiting for a few test results, if those are good at least he'll take me out of isolation."  
  
"Good. That's good." There was a rough undertone to Jim's voice, and he cleared his throat before he continued. "It's easier to stay with you out there, M'Benga is pretty damn strict about visits to the isolation ward. He didn't want to let me in at all, at first, once I got a clean bill of health. I even tried to pull rank on him, but I should have known that if it never works on you, it wouldn't work on him, either. He only let me in here once before he found the antiviral, and even then only in a decon suit. I couldn't even touch you."  
  
As if to make up for that, he reached out and grasped Leonard's hand in his own, intertwining their fingers so that their wedding rings rested beside each other.  
  
"I checked in whenever I could. I couldn't go off duty because Spock was busy trying to help M'Benga figure out where the hell that virus had come from, but I came by a couple of times each day. They kept you sedated pretty much throughout, though, so you were always out of it when I stood there and argued with M'Benga about letting me come in."  
  
Leonard could imagine only too well how that had gone. Jim was nothing if not a stubborn bastard, and Geoffrey was too good a doctor to bend the rules about infectious diseases, even for the highest ranking officer aboard. He was sure there had been a few shouting matches Jim wasn't telling him about right now.  
  
"You've been drifting in and out of it all morning, and M'Benga said you'd probably wake up soon, otherwise I wouldn't be in here now either, not even today…"  
  
Jim trailed off, and again Leonard had the feeling that he was missing something. It felt as if it was on the tip of his tongue, but it kept eluding him. It probably wasn't helping that the soup was spreading a comfortable warmth through his belly, not the exhausting kind of warmth he associated with his fever. He was still feeling sore all over, but it wasn't comparable to the pulsing pain he had suffered from earlier.  
  
He was warm, he was content, the meds Geoffrey had given him were doing their job, and he felt himself drifting pleasantly. Not even the uncomfortable biobed seemed like a torture device anymore, and Jim's hand was still entwined tightly with his.  
  
It was a pity, really, because Leonard knew that if he fell asleep now, Geoffrey would probably chase Jim out of the ward pretty quickly. He didn't want for Jim to leave, but it also seemed like too much of a struggle to fight against the pleasant drowsiness that was slowly but surely pulling him under.  
  
Jim seemed to realize what was happening, and he gave Leonard's hand an encouraging squeeze.  
  
"Sleep a bit, Bones. I'm under strict orders not to keep you up if you're tired."  
  
Leonard shook his head slightly, even though his eyes were dropping close. "…gonna kick you out…" he mumbled, his tongue growing heavier even as he did so.  
  
Jim chuckled. "No he won't. I'm your official nurse for today, I told you. So go and get some sleep, I'll be here when you wake up."  
  
Yes, Leonard remembered. Jim had told him that. Leonard didn't know what kind of deal his husband had struck with his colleague, but if that meant Jim was going to stick around, Leonard wasn't going to question it for now. Besides, he still had to figure out what Jim had meant. Something about Geoffrey not even letting him in today. Why today? He didn't even know for how many days he had been sedated an in the isolation ward. The away mission had been on Monday, and last he remembered it had been the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, and he had been puking his guts out. He had no idea how much time had passed since then.  
  
He was still drifting pleasantly, but was jostled back into awareness as the back of his bed was lowered again. Tiredly, he blinked up at Jim.  
  
"'at day s'it?"  
  
Jim's smile widened and he ran a hand through Leonard's stringy hair. "It's Saturday, in the early afternoon."  
  
It all made sense now. At least Leonard thought it had to, because his brain was telling him that things had fallen into place. But it took a little for the thoughts to really process and make coherent sense in his brain. The fact that his eyes were dropping closed again and his brain was about to switch to sleep wasn't exactly helping, either.  
  
Saturday.  
  
Saturday was February 20th.  
  
They had plans for  that Saturday, he remembered. _Off-duty-and-not-leaving-our-quarters_ kind of plans, because…  
  
Warm lips pressed against his forehead and pulled him a little further back to awareness.  
  
"Happy anniversary, Bones."  
  
He couldn't get his tongue to cooperate properly, or force his eyes to open again. But as he drifted off, he squeezed Jim's hand tightly in his. Their wedding rings pressed together with a small metallic sound, and Jim could only hope that his husband was going to understand all the things he couldn't say.  
  
He didn't doubt it for a second. They had always been good at wordless communication, after all.  
  
Leonard fell asleep then, Jim's hand still tightly clasped in his.  
  
  
 _ **The End.**  
_


End file.
